River valley on the way to the potteries

River valley on the way to the potteries - Trent & Mersey Canal

Thursday, June 29, 2017

At Great Haywood Junction we joined the Trent & Mersey Canal. The Staffs & Worcs and the Trent & Mersey have quite different characters. The Staffs & Worcs is often framed by woods and runs in cool shady cuttings, which was very nice in this hot weather. The Trent & Mersey on the other hand runs through the Trent river valley in this area, which means wide views over the valley and its water meadows, a very peaceful scenery.

River valley with wildlife

White geese (or ducks?) for a change

Water meadows

Part of this journey was going through the little town of Stone with its eight locks. The locks were OK, but deep and they had very narrow bridges over them. My mild bridge anxiety was back. Unnecessarily as they were all high enough. And fortunately the width of narrowboats is standardised.

Bridge at lock entrance

Locking in Stone with an audience

Stone lock with turnover bridge

Canalside brewery in Stone

We had a bit of drama around one of the Stone locks. I was approaching an open lock bottom gate on the boat to go up, when suddenly in front of the boat six little cygnets were ejected into the middle of the canal out of a chute on the side. They were crying and looked very confused. At the top of the lock the parents were looking around wondering where their babies had gone. They were unable to see them down below and obviously also couldn't hear them.

Most locks have a weir by the side to regulate the water level. In this case the weir was like a semi-circular water slide around the lock. The weir must have been dry for a while and the cygnets had sat on it. When the lock gate was closed, the weir suddenly started to overflow and the cygnets were washed down the slide.

Instead of focusing on operating the lock we tried to reunite the family of course with the help of two onlookers. Eventually we were able to coax the parents to the other side of the lock with some bread (I know, not good for them, but all that was to hand) and finally they saw their babies and flew down. Happy family reunion. Phew!

Trying to get the swans to look down

Family reunited

The water slide

Having learned the hard way that bridges can be very low, I had researched a bit more and learnt that some of the bridges in Stoke-on-Trent were supposed to be low and especially the infamous Hardcastle tunnel just after Stoke (more on that beast later). We therefore took all the plant containers and the bike inside. There was hardly any room to tread anywhere anymore. The bike lived on my bed.

Willum without its garden ...

... which is all inside

This is the route to "The Potteries". Stoke-on-Trent and the surrounding area was and is the centre of pottery, ceramics, porcellain, fine china ... everything of the sort. It is not a coincidence that the Trent & Mersey runs through Stoke as the pottery pioneer Josiah Wedgwood persuaded the canal pioneer James Brindley that the canal was to be built next to the first Wedgwood factory. Not only was the canal good for getting raw materials to the potteries (firing pottery needs a lot of coal), but it is much better to transport such fragile goods as pottery on the canal avoiding the bumpy roads of the time.

Here is an excursion into Stoke and the whole pottery area itself. As before I am reserving the blog post itself for canal related stuff.

In Stoke there is another lock flight with very deep locks. The only major event in those locks was the boat smashing into the top lock gate of the very last lock. These locks had very powerful surges when the paddles were opened too quickly. At the last lock the surge was such that even putting the boat hard into reverse could not stop the boat from hitting the gate. Nothing broke on the boat or the lock but the wineglasses fell out of the cupboard. They are frequent victims of any bumps. Oh well.

In Stoke we moored at the top of the lock flight in Etruria Yard. Etruria sounds Italian - because it is. It is the name of the area which was home of the ancient Etruscans, who were famous for their ... pottery of course. The entry into Etruria was difficult. The entrance is a 180 degree turn directly after the top lock. We managed OK with a lot of back and forth, but as this is a side arm, we had to turn around once inside before mooring up. When we got too close to one side, the prop stalled completely. Bugger! Something caught on it again. Which meant another dive into the weed hatch. This time we had picked up what looked like a mangled traffic cone. Sigh ...